Telecoms Stacking The Deck (And Sometimes Losing)

  A couple of things - good examples here of corporations writing and shaping laws and it should be noted that it is not just Big Cable but in an example below also phone companies - in this case an association of small phone companies.

Big Cable may have felled Seattle’s mayor, but it couldn’t stop this Colo. project

By Brian Fung, Updated: November 6 at 9:37 am

In 2009, Vince Jordan was one of a handful of Coloradans hoping to flip the switch on a next-generation fiber optic network in his area. Longmont's 17-mile loop of fiber would have been capable of connecting Jordan to the Web at speeds 100 times faster than the national average. The city owned the cables already. All it needed was approval from the city's voters.
But Jordan, the broadband manager for Longmont's public electric utility, failed to anticipate one thing: The cable companies.
"We got creamed," he says. "We lost by 12 [percentage points] in that vote."
On that election night four years ago, they were caught flat-footed. The cable industry had poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into thwarting its prospective government-owned challenger at the polls. It dwarfed the advocates' expenditures, which that year amounted to all of $95.

That history made last night's election results particularly sweet for the city's municipal fiber advocates. Longmont residents approved a $45.3 million bond issuance that will go toward funding a city-wide fiber network. But recent political fights haven't always had a happy ending for advocates of municipal broadband projects.
A nationwide campaign
Cable incumbents have been fighting to defeat municipal fiber proposals all over the country. We recently reported that cable groups invested money to defeat Seattle mayor Mike McGinn, a municipal fiber supporter. (For the record, Sena Fitzmaurice, a Comcast spokesperson, denied Tuesday that the company's political contributions had any connection with McGinn's broadband policies. She says Comcast has contributed consistently to the Seattle Broadband Communications Coalition of Washington over the past five years.) In early returns Tuesday, McGinn was trailing challenger Ed Murray, 56-44.
But the battle of Seattle is far from the only time advocates of new broadband initiatives have crossed swords with incumbent cable companies. Across the United States, cable lobbyists have helped erect legal barriers to stifle competition from public utilities. Industry groups have repeatedly filed lawsuits to block city attempts to roll out fiber service. And they have also opposed public referendums to allow cities to build their own networks.
Longmont, Colo., was merely one such battleground. In North St. Paul, Minn., a 2009 ballot measure to let muni fiber move forward was defeated by a resounding 34-point margin. Opposition to the fledgling network, PolarNet, was led by the Minnesota Cable Communications Association. In the weeks leading up to the vote, it and other opposition groups spent some $40,000 campaigning against the measure. MCCA alone contributed more than $15,000 to the effort over the same period.
Part of the organization's message was that despite consumer confusion about the options for commercial Internet, the local market for broadband was actually very competitive — people just didn't know it.
"So many things have happened since then," says Michael Martin, MCCA's treasurer. "The state has developed a mapping system that shows all the providers in an area so people can go to an objective source and identify the competitors that are available to them. That wasn't available at the time. A lot of what people knew about what was available came mainly through word of mouth. It was anecdotal."
Whatever workarounds may have been built since the push for PolarNet, the fiber optic cables it was supposed to light up with traffic remain dark today. Paul Ammerman, North St. Paul's economic development director, seemed resigned to the cable industry's will.
"We're trying to figure out if it's worth the effort," he says. "Certainly we've got a lot of capacity that's not being used. On the horizon there's always the next breakthrough that might do it. Some say maybe the last mile is not fiber; maybe it's wireless. But that gets beyond the current technology."
In Chattanooga, one of the few places where municipal fiber has managed to gain traction, the state cable association filed a lawsuit in 2007 alleging that the local public utility, EPB, would be breaking the law if it allowed its electricity division to cross-subsidize its fiber optic service. When a judge threw out the case the following year, Comcast filed its own suit. That too was dismissed — and once more on appeal in 2009.
Big Cable's big stand
Still, Longmont may offer the most vivid example of cable industry groups trying to hobble a public broadband provider. Colorado is one of more than a dozen states that have passed laws prohibiting or hindering municipal broadband deployments. (Tennessee and Minnesota made it onto the Federal Communications Commission's initial list in 2004; Colorado proposed its law one year later.) Under the restriction, known as SB 152, cities that want to use their fiber optic cables to provide Internet service must get the approval of its residents before doing so. The rule effectively forbids local governments from managing their own property.
Lobbyists played an obscure but important role in pushing the bill through. According to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, the Colorado Telecommunications Association, a group representing 25 rural phone companies, hired two different teams of lobbyists in 2005 to promote the idea. One, Axiom Strategies, Inc., received $6,000 in contributions from CTA in 2005, a review of state records shows. Lobbyist Patrick Boyle, received $20,616.60 from the industry over the same period.
This chain of events is what ultimately led to Longmont's failed 2009 referendum on muni fiber; under the newly-passed law, the city couldn't move forward unless a majority of residents gave their consent. The state's cable group — the Colorado Cable Telecommunications Association — intervened, donating nearly $225,000 to an opposition committee named No Blank Check. Armed with these funds, the group took out full-page newspaper ads assigning nefarious motives to foreign investors who might have played a role in the project.
But not long after the cable industry's victory, Google started floating the idea of installing gigabit fiber in various sites around the country. Some in Longmont suggested petitioning the tech giant to make the city one of its testbeds.
"That really helped us educate the community to the value of what we already have here," says Longmont's Vince Jordan. "So we went again [with another referendum] in 2011."
This time, CCTA went all-in on fighting the initiative. It upped its contribution to anti-fiber groups, giving $385,000 to a committee called Look Before We Leap. This, in a battle that saw total opposition expenditures top $419,000. In other words, 92 percent of the messaging war against Question 2A was funded by the cable industry.
Yet the increased industry spending hardly seemed to make a difference. By a 61-39 percent vote, city residents agreed that Longmont should be able to do with its fiber optic cables what it wished.
How much did pro-fiber groups spend in that encounter? Around $3,700, says Jordan.
There are 27,000 households in Longmont. Even if the city were to connect all of the eligible homes to its existing fiber network overnight, it would still reach only 1,100 residences. Cable companies therefore spent over half a million dollars trying to prevent four percent of city households from gaining access to municipal fiber on any reasonable timescale. That's around $600 a home, or six months' worth of Xfinity Triple Play.
Did Longmont set a precedent?
Perhaps that's why the cable industry has mostly given up fighting Longmont — it's not worth it anymore. On Tuesday night, voters overwhelmingly approved of the city's third fiber ballot measure since SB 152, Question 2B. Question 2B asks whether the local government should be allowed to issue $45.3 million in bonds to pay for a city-wide deployment of fiber, one that would finally connect all 27,000 homes, and every private business, to public fiber within the next three years. Proponents estimated that without the funding, it would take a half-century to complete the roll-out. Voters gave it the green light, by a 68-32 percent split. No group came forward to contest the measure. The cable companies had picked up their ball and gone home.
This doesn't mean they're going to start backing down everywhere. Critics of municipal networks continue to point to the financial risks taxpayers assume when cities decide to embark on such ambitious projects.
"We've been supportive of public-private partnerships where tax dollars aren't competing against private investment capital," says Comcast's Sena Fitzmaurice. "In general, cities have extensive infrastructure needs like roads, bridges and schools, and we think especially in times of fiscal tradeoffs that taxpayer money should be focused on those needs rather than competing with the private sector."
There are certainly more than a handful of municipalities whose fiber projects have failed. Provo, Utah famously sold its public network to Google for a single dollar this year (though the tech company will also assume the burden for Provo's construction loans, which is not insignificant, either). Still, the fact that some local governments have struggled to monetize their fiber, even as others have succeeded, is not an argument for preventing cities from experimenting.
Longmont's plan explicitly bars the use of tax money to pay off the bonds. Instead, it will rely solely on revenues from broadband customers. Whether that'll actually work out is hardly clear. But what Longmont's experience does show is how large the gulf is between an incumbent industry that can spend money on a massive scale to promote its interests and advocates of municipal fiber that often lack deep-pocketed allies. Those odds made the triumph of Longmont's municipal fiber backers all the more remarkable.
Correction: The original version of this post identified a lobbying contributor as the Colorado Cable Telecommunications Association when in fact it was the Colorado Telecommunications Association.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/11/06/big-cable-helped-defeat-seattles-mayor-mcginn-but-they-couldnt-stop-this-colorado-project/?hpid=z5

US Army Leading Trash To Gas Efforts

From The New York Times -

August 17, 2013

Trash Into Gas, Efficiently? An Army Test May Tell

By PAUL TULLIS

THERE is an indisputable elegance to the idea of transforming garbage into fuel, of turning icky, smelly detritus into something valuable.

But big drawbacks have prevented the wholesale adoption of trash-to-gas technology in the United States: incineration is polluting, and the capital costs of new plants are enormous. Gasification systems can expend a tremendous amount of energy to produce a tiny amount of electricity. Up to this point, it hasn’t seemed worth the trouble.

Mike Hart thinks that he has solved those problems. In a former Air Force hangar outside Sacramento, his company, Sierra Energy, has spent the last several years testing a waste-to-energy system called the FastOx Pathfinder. The centerpiece, a waste gasifier that’s about the size of a shower stall, is essentially a modified blast furnace. A chemical reaction inside the gasifier heats any kind of trash — whether banana peels, used syringes, old iPods, even raw sewage — to extreme temperatures without combustion. The output includes hydrogen and carbon monoxide, which together are known as syngas, for synthetic gas, and  can be burned to generate electricity or made into ethanol or diesel fuel. The FastOx is now being prepared for delivery to Sierra Energy’s first customer: the United States Army.

Ethanol has long been promoted as an alternative fuel that increases energy independence, and federal law requires the use of greater amounts of it. But most ethanol in this country is produced from corn, and many people worry that the mandate is pushing up food prices. Ethanol produced from trash — or agricultural waste, as others are trying — would allay such concerns.

Ineos Bio, a Florida company, announced last month that it had produced ethanol from gasified wood waste, using a method that it expects to be commercially viable, and KiOR Inc. will make one million to two million gallons of diesel and gasoline this year from wood waste at its plant in Columbus, Miss., according to Michael McAdams, president of the Advanced Biofuels Association. Mr. Hart said Sierra Energy’s technology should be complementary with the Florida company’s; the FastOx turns all municipal waste, not just wood scraps, into a gas that Ineos Bio could then transform into ethanol.

The FastOx gasifier is the brainchild of two former engineers at Kaiser Steel, patented by the grandson of one of them and commercialized by Mr. Hart. “It’s a modular system that can be dropped into any area,” Mr. Hart said, “using waste where it’s produced to make electricity where it’s used.” Once it’s off the ground, he said, “garbage will be a commodity.”  

From concept to construction, the story of the FastOx is of one fortuitous accident after another. And while Sierra Energy has not yet proved to be a successful company — it will be a long while before your garbage is shoveled into a FastOx — its system has become the first waste-to-energy technology acquired by the Defense Department, which paid $3 million for it through an environmental technology program. (The California Energy Commission, which supports renewable energy development in the state, also gave Sierra $5 million, to cover the portion of Sierra’s costs that the Pentagon couldn’t.)

The military is looking for ways to reduce its oil consumption, and to make it easier to supply the front lines with the fuel it uses in all its vehicles and generators. “These days, the supply lines are in the battlefield,” said Sharon E. Burke, the assistant secretary of defense for operational efficiency plans and programs. “And we consume a lot of fuel, which makes us a big target.”

MIKE HART got into the energy business by way of a train. In 1993, he bought the Sierra Railroad, a small freight and tourism line in Northern California. During the California blackouts of 2001, he had an idea: “As the lights were going out, I realized every one of my locomotives creates 2.1 megawatts of electricity,” he said — enough to power many hundred homes. “It’s a rolling generator, and inexpensive.”

The train-as-power-generator idea never really left the station, but it got Mr. Hart thinking about alternative energy. Then, as part of a settlement after a fuel spill from one of his trains, he promised to convert his trains to nonpolluting biodiesel.

Biodiesel, however, proved hard to find, and Mr. Hart started looking for new ways to source it. In 2002, he was asked to judge an annual business plan competition called the Big Bang, at the University of California, Davis. That’s where he met Chris Kasten.

Mr. Kasten came to the competition with an idea to use a modified blast furnace to turn waste into fuel. His grandfather, Bruce Claflin, a retired chief industrial engineer at Kaiser Steel in Fontana, Calif., had given him the idea.

Kaiser used blast furnaces to make steel, and Mr. Claflin and a colleague, John Jasbinsek, were tasked with finding “a way to make the blast furnace more efficient and less polluting,” said Mr. Jasbinsek, who is now 86.

Like all blast furnaces, Kaiser’s emitted a flue gas out of the top. It occurred to Mr. Clafin and Mr. Jasbinsek that this gas might have value. The two came up with the idea of injecting oxygen, instead of the atmospheric air that steel makers had always used, to create the chemical reaction that heats the inside of the furnace. This would cut pollution while raising the energy content of the flue gas — in essence, giving the steel maker a second product. But pure oxygen made the system too hot, so they added steam. This gave the furnace a third product: hydrogen, which can be used to produce electricity in fuel cells.

After Kaiser decided to close the Fontana plant in 1983, workers were told to toss all demolition debris into the blast furnace. It was then that Mr. Jasbinsek and Mr. Claflin realized that the furnace could take garbage, too. “No matter what they put in, the furnace melted and gasified it,” Mr. Kasten said. This meant a potential fourth revenue stream — from taking municipal waste that would otherwise go to landfills.

When Kaiser wasn’t interested, Mr. Jasbinsek recalled, “we took the idea to other steel companies, too.” But “nobody gave a damn!” he said. “Now there are hardly any steel companies left in the U.S.”

Kaiser Steel went bankrupt in 1987, so the idea belonged to Mr. Jasbinsek and Mr. Claflin. They were nearing retirement, though, so Mr. Claflin told his grandson about it. (Mr. Claflin died before the idea could be commercialized.)

Mr. Kasten’s first fruitful step in developing his grandfather’s idea was meeting with Chris Soderquist, founder of Venture Lab. “When you run a technology incubator, you see a lot of crazy and half-baked ideas,” Mr. Soderquist said. But Mr. Kasten’s was different; Mr. Soderquist could see right away the value of multiple revenue streams.

Gasification is more efficient than incineration and eliminates toxic byproducts that come from burning trash. But it was especially appealing from a business point of view because it relied on a proven technology and used materials in wide abundance: blast furnaces being abandoned as the American steel industry was collapsing.

“What was compelling from the start,” Mr. Soderquist said, “was repurposing existing infrastructure into a generator of clean energy, with a second revenue stream from people paying you to take their waste.”

Mr. Soderquist helped Mr. Kasten prepare for the Big Bang competition. “For a grad school business plan competition, it was quite a plan he presented,” Mr. Soderquist said, and the judges agreed: Mr. Kasten, now 43, won a $2,000 prize.

Mr. Hart, 51, as a competition judge and a serial entrepreneur, was intrigued. He had started his first business at 12, operating a string of candy machines in high schools throughout what would become known as Silicon Valley. Next, while still living at home, he opened a sort of temp agency for teenagers doing odd jobs. There were a lot of other businesses from the late 1970s to 1993, and stints as a developer for Steve Jobs’s company Next, and for Apple. Mr. Hart also did some consulting until he realized that he would make more money buying whatever devalued company he had been hired to help, and turning it around himself. That was when he bought the Sierra Railroad.

Mr. Hart checked out Mr. Kasten’s gasifier and decided to buy the patents. Then he applied to a Pentagon program established to shepherd proven concepts to the production stage. Results at the Defense Department’s testing facility near Sacramento have been promising; after about four hours, one ton of waste creates enough gas to produce 1,580 kilowatt-hours of electricity, which would power an average home in the United States for about a month and a half — at one-third the emissions of coal — and 42 gallons of renewably sourced fuel. And that’s with a 12-ton-a-day gasifier; existing blast furnaces can handle as much as 2,000 tons a day.

Now that the Pentagon is convinced that the FastOx will work as advertised, the system should be providing electricity later this year at Fort Hunter Liggett, a  training base in Monterey County, Calif., and fuel for vehicles and generators in early 2014.

“California produces 30 million tons of garbage a year,” Mr. Hart said. “If it decided to turn its waste into clean fuels, at that rate it could meet all its oil consumption needs and still export more fuel than some OPEC members.” That is, if the FastOx can do what no other waste-to-energy gasification technology has done before: take any kind of trash, in any succession, without additional separation or preparation.

Sierra plans to license its technology and to sell systems to make electricity or ethanol from the syngas produced by the FastOx. The first will be small and cost about $3 million. But Mr. Hart said he expects to sell larger systems to municipalities and biofuel makers that will go for much more.

Any waste-to-energy plan, however, must overcome a major hurdle: the wild inconsistency of the waste stream. “Until you’ve demonstrated that you can handle it all, nobody’s interested,” Mr. Hart said. “I can understand it; they’ve heard similar promises before. We’ve got 150 cities, communities and businesses lined up to be Serial No. 2. Nobody wants to be No. 1.”

NOBODY, that is, except the Pentagon. The Defense Department is the country’s largest single consumer of energy, spending $15 billion a year just on fuel.

“The mission drives this,” said Ms. Burke, the assistant defense secretary, “and the mission is inherently energy-intensive.”

The FastOx could reduce the military’s reliance on oil overseas and the grid at home. “I have a $24 million-a-year electric bill at Camp Pendleton” in Southern California, said that Marine base’s commander, Brig. Gen. Vincent A. Coglianese. “If I can reduce that cost, that’s more money I can put into training Marines and sailors.”

Ms. Burke added, “Something for military operations has to be really rugged, deployable, simple to use — all of those things.”

Consultants and municipal sanitation officials who’ve looked at the FastOx say it meets those criteria. John Conger, the acting deputy under secretary of defense for installations and the environment, who oversees management of military bases in the United States, says Sierra Energy’s technology should provide energy security for the military in the event of a blackout and provide budget savings as well.

The military’s cost of petroleum, when the costs of transporting and guarding it are factored in, can run as high as $50 a gallon. Moreover, about half of United States casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2003 and 2007 were of servicemen and servicewomen moving and protecting fuel convoys, according to an Army report.

The appeal of Mr. Hart’s Pathfinder system is that it would produce fuel on site, eliminating the need to truck in fuel to dangerous military outposts. It would also reduce the need for trash-burning on bases, which creates pollution and noxious odors that have contributed to locals’ distaste for the American presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.  As a result, United States forces in Afghanistan are working to close burn pits.

“Waste is a problem,” Ms. Burke said. “So if we could dispose of waste and create energy at the same time, that would be a silver bullet.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: August 25, 2013
An article last Sunday about a Sierra Energy gasifier system that the Army will use to turn trash into energy referred incorrectly to a product of the system. It is hydrogen and carbon monoxide, together known as “syngas,” for synthetic gas; the system does not produce “synthetic natural gas.” The article also referred imprecisely to Fort Hunter Liggett, a training base in Monterey County, Calif. At more than 165,000 acres, it is not a “small” base.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: September 1, 2013



http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/business/trash-into-gas-efficiently-an-army-test-may-tell.html

Encouraging Electric Vehicles In The US

From The Washington Post - encouraging electric vehicles - notye the serious increase in sales already - very small numbers but jumbo percentages.

Eight-state coalition plans incentives for zero emission vehicles

By Lenny Bernstein, Published: October 24

A coalition of eight states announced plans Thursday to boost the use of electric cars and other zero emission vehicles, promising incentives and an improved network of fueling stations to encourage consumers to buy the vehicles and prompt manufacturers to produce more of them.
The eight governors who signed the agreement, including Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), hope to put at least 3.3 million zero emission vehicles on their roads by 2025. To accomplish that, they pledged to install more electric charging stations, introduce or continue tax breaks for consumers and add such vehicles to government fleets. Some other states have similar incentives, though they did not join the group.
Collectively, the eight states — California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont — represent about 23 percent of the U.S. auto market, according to information the group released Thursday.
“We think it’s doable,” said Mary Nichols, chairman of the Air Resources Board in California, the biggest market in the group. “The market is moving fast. It started from zero and it accelerated very quickly.”
Nichols and others said the greatest obstacle to overcome is consumer resistance to new technology. Buyers must be convinced that the vehicles will work for them, she said, a process that usually requires seeing them on the road or in a neighbor’s driveway — not just in an advertisement.
“Once we are able to get the word out to consumers that there is an infrastructure out there, and [it is] all over the state … we’ll be able to encourage a greater desire to get an electric vehicle in Maryland,” said Samantha Kappalman, a spokeswoman for O’Malley.
U.S. motorists bought about 52,000 electric cars in 2012, up from about 17,000 in 2011, according to the group. More than 40,000 plug-in cars were sold in the first half of 2013. In addition to all-electric cars, the group wans to encourage production and purchase of fuel cell vehicles, which run on hydrogen, and plug-in hybrids , which have both electric and gasoline engines.
Fossil fuels burned to power cars, trucks, ships, trains and planes were responsible for 28 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2011, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Maryland wants to put 60,000 zero emission vehicles on its roads by 2020, Kappalman said, and will add another 110 to 160 public charging stations to the 430 that exist. In addition to the $7,500 federal tax credit available to buyers of such vehicles, the state offers a $1,000 excise tax credit, a $400 tax credit for any equipment purchased and access to HOV lanes, she said.
In 2012, 1,764 electric vehicles were sold in Maryland, up from 227 in 2011. This year’s sales will surpass last year’s, she said.




http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/eight-state-coalition-plans-incentives-for-zero-emission-vehicles/2013/10/24/f79b36f8-3ca3-11e3-a94f-b58017bfee6c_story.html

Fighting For Roof Tops

From the front lines in Colorado and Arizona of the battle over how roof top solar interacts with the grid.

Solar advocates and Xcel spar over the future of rooftop solar power

By Mark Jaffe
The Denver Post

Posted:   10/29/2013 04:14:48 PM MDT

sUpdated:   10/30/2013 02:13:41 AM MDT

 

Read more: Solar advocates and Xcel spar over the future of rooftop solar power - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_24412625/solar-advocates-and-xcel-spar-over-future-rooftop#ixzz2jEJlJA4w
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An attempt to find common ground on state policies for rooftop solar started Tuesday with a sharp exchange between Xcel Energy and solar-energy advocates.
The session ended with Xcel's refusal to withdraw its proposal — which is pending at the Colorado Public Utilities Commission — to cut rooftop-solar incentives.
In turn, the representatives from Vote Solar, a solar-energy advocacy group, said they were not sure of the value of continuing the talks.
The session, hosted by the Colorado Energy Office, brought together representatives of utilities, state government and the solar-energy industry.
The goal was to try to balance the interests of utilities and the solar industry "before it degenerates into contention," said Jeff Ackermann, director of the energy office.
The contention, however, was evident in opening statements.
Xcel's concern is that the credit given to homes and businesses with solar panels that add kilowatt-hours to the grid is too high and burdens other customers, said Frank Prager, an Xcel vice president.
In a PUC filing, Xcel is calling for a cut in the credit, the so-called net-meter charge.
The credit is equal to the price a residential customers pays: 10.5 cents a kilowatt-hour.
If the credit isn't cut, Xcel wants to reduce new solar installations in its Solar Rewards program by 83 percent to 6 megawatts.
"Utilities are working to stop and slow down these innovative technologies," said Rick Gilliam, Vote Solar's director of research.
In turn, Prager objected to the proposal that how a utility conducts its business and its planning to accommodate new technology should be part of the discussion.
"This was a missed opportunity," said Edward Stern, executive director of the Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group.
"(Gov. John Hickenlooper) got all the relevant parties to the table, and that was a great step," Stern said. "But Xcel forcing net-metering into its renewable-energy-compliance plan makes it hard to have a discussion."
Challenges to Xcel's plan must be filed with the PUC in two weeks.
"There just isn't enough time to do everything," Stern said.
The energy office is, however, planning another session.
"We are optimistic because we see that people are willing to put forward their points of view," Ackerman said in an e-mail. "The prospects for consensus should not be judged by one meeting."
Mark Jaffe: 303-954-1912, mjaffe@denverpost.com or twitter.com/bymarkjaffe

Read more: Solar advocates and Xcel spar over the future of rooftop solar power - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_24412625/solar-advocates-and-xcel-spar-over-future-rooftop#ixzz2jEJfUdoC
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http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_24412625/solar-advocates-and-xcel-spar-over-future-rooftop

Ariz. utility, solar industry fight over solar credits

Ryan Randazzo, The Arizona Republic 4:19 p.m. EDT October 29, 2013

 

States look to Arizona to see how they resolve the net-metering issue.

 

PHOENIX -- Arizona finds itself as the national hot spot when it comes to solar subsidies, with utility executives and industry officials squaring off in a showdown that could shape the future of residential solar use across the country.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising have been spent to influence a looming regulatory decision that in essence is quite basic.
It's about affordability.
Arizona Public Service Co. says credits to solar users are so high that current solar-panel customers, many of them living in more-affluent areas, don't pay their share for upkeep of the power grid. That, executives say, pushes that cost to non-solar households, making their bills less affordable.
But if solar customers' bills are increased, as the utility suggests, can people who get panels installed on their houses still save money with solar? And if not, can the solar-installation companies survive?
An estimated 9,800 people work in the solar industry in Arizona, and the majority of them install rooftop panels.
The Arizona Corporation Commission will address the matter Nov. 13 as a variety of alternatives have been offered.
A decision could set a precedent for other utilities in Arizona and elsewhere.
Forty-three states have net-metering policies. Several, including California, New Mexico, Idaho and Louisiana, have looked at altering their policies, and several others have requested studies on the net costs and benefits of rooftop solar. Net metering gives customers with solar panels on their homes credit for the excess power they send to the grid when their houses are not using all the power from their roof.
The debate in Arizona has drawn national media attention and interest from the Washington, D.C.-based Solar Energy Industries Association. It prompted a letter-writing campaign by President Barack Obama's non-profit advocacy group Organizing for Action, which has flooded the regulators with letters, many from out of state.
Observers say Arizona's reputation as the country's solar capital is at stake. About 200 Arizona Public Service customers a month are adding solar to their houses now, and the commission decision could determine whether tens of thousands of customers anticipated to use solar in the future continue with those plans.
The company is well-known in the industry for its solar investments, and CEO Don Brandt was named the Solar Electric Power Association's Utility CEO of the Year in 2009. He was honored for the company's deal to buy power from the Solana Generating Station near Gila Bend, Ariz., for its investments in its own solar plants and for a program to put solar panels on Flagstaff, Ariz., houses.
But the new net-metering proposal has made the utility the bane of rooftop-solar installation companies such as SolarCity Corp. and Sunrun Inc., as well as solar advocates.
David Wilson of Goodyear, Ariz., said he doesn't like the company's proposal, even if officials say it would not affect existing customers like him.
"I don't trust them," he said. "We make this huge investment, and they go and change the rules. We would lose the benefits, and they would continue to get the energy we are providing."
STORY: N.Y. man erects solar panels as testament to waste
The Corporation Commission staff, which advises the five-member elected commission, has rejected Arizona Public Service's proposals and developed its own suggestions on solar credits. Commissioners recognize the importance of the matter.
"The eyes of the country and the energy world at least are on Arizona to see what we can come up with," said Commission Chairman Bob Stump. "It is a privilege to set a policy that potentially can be a model for other states."
Stump said he hopes to settle the matter this month, but debate could continue for two more years. The company's next rate hearing will be in 2015.
Arizona Public Service: Change needed
The battle started last year, when Arizona Public Service signaled it wanted to change its net-metering program.
Brandt, who is also president and CEO of the parent company, Pinnacle West Capital Corp., said that if the net-metering issue was not fixed, it could lead to a much bigger problem down the road as more people use solar and non-solar customers see bigger bill increases.
"Today, costs are being shifted unfairly from solar to non-solar customers in a way that cannot be sustained," he said.
The utility invited industry representatives to discuss the issue at meetings earlier this year, then filed an official proposal with the Arizona Corporation Commission in July that would increase the monthly bill for solar customers by $50 to $100.
The proposal has many moving parts. Utility executives said one element of the proposal is to increase the up-front incentives they pay customers who purchase solar.
Utility executives said they want to reach a settlement on net metering that allows the industry to continue to grow.
"Our proposal before the Arizona Corporation Commission includes support for up-front incentives that will ensure that rooftop solar remains an important part of our energy mix in Arizona," Brandt said.
When the proposal was submitted, it came under criticism from the rooftop-solar companies.
"It is a fight we did not seek and would prefer to avoid. But we must set the record straight," Brandt said. "We have an obligation to our customers, our employees and our shareholders."
Industry backlash
SolarCity and Sunrun of California, two of the biggest national solar-panel installation companies operating in Arizona, formed a high-profile alliance this year, presenting advertising critical of Arizona Public Service through a non-profit called TUSK, Tell Utilities Solar Won't Be Killed.
The solar companies contend that rather than freeload on the power grid, customers with solar panels save utilities and their customers money by deferring the cost of new power lines and plants. The financial analyses used by the utility and the solar industry differ widely on this point.
Solar-industry executives, including SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive, say that the utility is less interested in protecting the non-solar customers than it is in losing revenue.
"If you look at the rate of adoption of customers, over next 20 years, that would roughly equal $2 billion in lost profits," Rive said. "That is why they are so passionate about this. They just don't want somebody else to service their customer."
Ed Fenster, co-CEO of Sunrun, said fees paid by utility customers helped incentivize the solar industry and allowed Sunrun and other companies to grow. He said the utility fears the strength of the solar industry now that those subsidies are not needed.
"Ratepayers made an investment that with greater scale, solar would come at a lower cost," he said. "That investment paid off. It is that exact fact that is causing APS to halt the industry."
Fenster said the utility is putting up a big fight on the issue because solar is a legitimate threat to its business model.
"They've tried to slowly boil the frog that is their ratepayer for years, and now (solar) will place a cap on their prices," Fenster said. "They will be held to a competitive standard for the first time in their history."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/10/29/solar-panel-subsidy-battle/3297365/

The Battle To Control Solar Power

     A number of years ago when I told friends with solar power interests that I wanted my system to have batteries, some would question my sanity - you live in the city, connecting to the grid is easy, they would say. I tried to tell them that they were missing something - even though I live in the urban core, being capable of being powered completely from off the grid is a worthy goal with numerous advantages. The most basic is that allows one to be a true producer - relying on the grid at night should be seen as a back-up, not a first line strategy.
    In this article from Bloomberg, we are shown California electric utilities that are rejecting battery supported solar electric systems from grid inter-connections on technical reasons when more likely their objection is rooted in a non-ability to envision a different business model that includes micro users/producers. That smart meter is not so smart.

Battery-Stored Solar Power Sparks Backlash From Utilities

By Ehren Goossens and Mark Chediak - Oct 8, 2013

California’s three biggest utilities are sparring with their own customers about systems that store energy from the sun, opening another front in the battle that’s redefining the mission of electricity generators.
Edison International (EIX), PG&E Corp. and Sempra Energy (SRE) said they’re putting up hurdles to some battery backups wired to solar panels because they can’t be certain the power flowing back to the grid from the units is actually clean energy.
The dispute threatens the state’s $2 billion rooftop solar industry and indicates the depth of utilities’ concerns about consumers producing their own power. People with rooftop panels are already buying less electricity, and adding batteries takes them closer to the day they won’t need to buy from the local grid at all, said Ben Peters, a government affairs analyst at Mainstream Energy Corp., which installs solar systems.
“The utilities clearly see rooftop solar as the next threat,” Peters said from his office in Sunnyvale, California. “They’re trying to limit the growth.”
California is the largest of the 43 states encouraging renewables by requiring utilities to buy electricity from consumer solar installations, typically at the same price that customers pay for power from the grid. The policy, known as net metering, offers a way for households to reduce their bills. It underpinned a 78 percent surge in the state’s residential installations in the second quarter from a year earlier, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Battery Costs

Solar systems with batteries attached have gained a foothold in the market as costs fall, allowing customers more flexibility for using their own power at night or when local supplies fail. The systems average about $12,000 to $16,000, adding about 25 percent to the cost of rooftop power plants, according to Outback Power Inc., an Arlington, Washington-based provider of battery-backed solar systems.
Matthew Sperling, a Santa Barbara, California, resident, installed eight panels and eight batteries at his home in April.
“We wanted to have an alternative in case of a blackout to keep the refrigerator running,” he said in an interview. Southern California Edison rejected his application to link the system to the grid even though city inspectors said “it was one of the nicest they’d ever seen,” he said.
“We’ve installed a $30,000 system and we can’t use it,” Sperling said.
Utilities say the storage systems open the possibility of fraud. The issue is whether all the electricity being sold through the net metering program is generated only by renewable sources, as required. Consumers in theory can fill the batteries with power from the grid and then send it back designated as renewable energy. With the solar-battery systems, there’s no way to determine the source of the energy. Solar suppliers say that’s not happening.

Storage Rules

Power-market regulations and the industry’s ability to monitor flows from solar systems haven’t kept pace with the technology, said Gary Stern, director of regulatory policy at Southern California Edison, a unit of Edison International.
“Our rules are not really caught up to effectively include issues with energy storage,” Stern said in a phone interview from Rosemead, California.
The company doesn’t want to “discourage solar” and is working with regulators to come up with “reasonable policies” for battery-storage systems, said Vanessa McGrady, a Southern California Edison spokeswoman.
State regulators are aware of the problem and are working on guidance to offer both solar installers and utilities, according to Terrie Prosper, a spokeswoman for the California Public Utilities Commission in San Francisco.

‘Some Complaints’

“There have been some complaints from developers in Southern California Edison’s territory that Edison has inconsistently applied the benefits of net energy metering to energy-storage projects,” Prosper said in an e-mail. The commission is working with all three utilities “to provide formal direction on these issues in the coming months.”
The utilities said they would approve systems that have panels and batteries if they had two meters to verify that only solar energy is sold to the grid. Such a configuration would boost installation costs by at least $1,300, according to Neal Reardon, the state utility regulator’s interim supervisor of customer generation.
The dispute is expanding as California promotes wider use of batteries. Regulators in June proposed that the top three utilities procure 1.3 gigawatts of storage capacity by 2020. The state has set a goal of obtaining 33 percent of its power from renewables by 2020, the nation’s strongest requirement. With more electricity coming from intermittent sources such as wind and sunlight, storage systems will be an important tool to manage the grid.

Falling Prices

Demand for the systems may grow as prices decline. Battery costs are forecast to fall 57 percent to $807 a kilowatt-hour in 2020 from $1,893 for a kilowatt-hour of storage capacity now, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The global market for solar systems combined with energy storage will rise to $2.8 billion in 2018 from less than $200 million this year, according to Boston-based Lux Research Inc.
About 391 megawatts of solar panels were fitted at customer sites across the state last year, according the California Solar Initiative. The price to install residential projects has declined 15 percent to $3.71 a watt in the second quarter from $4.35 a year earlier according to the Washington-based trade group SEIA.
Battery systems are the latest innovation that’s unraveling the traditional monopoly utilities have enjoyed in supplying consumers with electricity. Two decades ago, federal regulators opened the system to independent power producers, eating away at the utility’s control of generation. The battery systems will put more customers out of reach.

Rejected Applications

“What we are seeing now as a fairly rare event may be more common by the end of the decade,” said Southern California Edison’s Stern.
Mainstream began hearing in May that Southern California Edison was rejecting some of its clients from the net metering program. As many as 60 projects with panels and batteries have been turned down by California utilities, the company estimated.
PG&E Corp. (PCG), the owner of California’s biggest utility, has also rejected standard net metering applications from customers with both panels and batteries, and referred them to another program that requires an interconnection fee.
“The key is that the full retail net energy metering credits and subsidies are only available to renewable facilities,” Lynsey Paulo, a PG&E spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.
San Diego Gas & Electric, a unit of Sempra Energy, said it hasn’t received any such applications, and it would deny them if it did. Sempra slipped less than 0.1 percent to $85.43 at the close in New York. PG&E climbed 1.5 percent and Edison gained 1.1 percent.

‘State of Flux’

“Technically, a customer who now has a combined system that includes both rooftop solar panels and battery storage, the battery storage may not qualify for net energy metering under current rules,” said Stephanie Donovan, a spokeswoman for San Diego Gas & Electric. “The rules are in a state of flux.”
Mainstream’s Peters said Southern California Edison is now rejecting systems that are identical to ones it had approved in the past. The developer had been installing two to three solar-storage projects a week in Southern California at the start of this year. That’s dropped to zero in recent weeks, and some orders have been canceled.
“Net metering is the lifeblood of solar in America,” Peters said. “That’s why this seemingly inconsequential issue is getting so much attention.”
Solar panel owners aren’t trying to “game the system,” said Adam Browning, executive director of the San Francisco-based lobbying group Vote Solar Initiative. “The next step is that people with solar and batteries will find a way to make it work without utilities.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Ehren Goossens in New York at egoossens1@bloomberg.net; Mark Chediak in San Francisco at mchediak@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-07/battery-stored-solar-power-sparks-backlash-from-utilities.html

How To Get To A More Energy Efficient House - UK Struggles

This article touches on a number of issues and includes a lot of info. For example, "fuel poverty" and the relation of energy costs in the UK and housing that is designed for poor energy efficiency.

Osborne plan to cut energy efficiency funds for fuel poor is 'unforgivable'

Government's own adviser on fuel poverty says chancellor's attack on Energy Company Obligation is 'completely inequitable'

• Damian Carrington
• theguardian.com, Friday 11 October 2013 02.00 EDT

George Osborne's plan to cut financial support for energy efficiency in poorer households is an "unforgivable" attack, according to the government's own adviser on fuel poverty.
With a political row raging over soaring energy bills, inflamed further by an 8% rise from the "big six" energy company SSE on Thursday, Osborne and No 10 sources have repeatedly indicated that the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) is being targeted for cuts or delays to reduce the government levies imposed on consumer energy bills.
But Derek Lickorish, chair of the government's Fuel Poverty Advisory Group, said: "It is completely inequitable to attack the only measure that is doing something for the fuel poor in England. It is unforgivable when we have energy prices that are going only in one direction."
In a letter to No 10, the Treasury and energy departments, seen by the Guardian, Lickorish labels the cuts "perverse", arguing that the fastest and cheapest way of reducing energy bills is through better insulation of the UK's ageing and draughty housing stock.
On Friday the business secretary, Vince Cable, said it would be "short-sighted and foolish" to ditch green levies that make up just under 10% of the average bill.
"The rise in energy prices is due to a whole variety of things, by far the most important of which is what's happening in world energy markets," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"We've had over a period of years very rapidly rising demand in Asia, particularly in China. We've had restrictions on supply from countries like Iran. A combination of these things has pushed up oil and gas prices and that is what has fed through to consumers."

His comments followed a suggestion from the CEO of SSE, Alistair Phillips-Davies, that his company's 8.2% price hike announced on Thursday was "helpful" to focus the nation's spending priorities.
Phillips-Davies told the Daily Telegraph: "A price rise is never a good thing to do, but if it focuses everyone on to a debate about what we as a nation should be spending money on, then in one way it will be helpful.
"We need to think about what people really want to pay for; maybe it's time to retreat from decarbonisation and focus more on the cost of living. I think we have to have a debate about it.
"Do we want to be replacing one bit of [energy] generation that we can keep going for a bit longer with a new bit of generation that's going to cost more?"
According to the Department of Energy and Climate Change, the ECO costs billpayers £1.3bn a year and makes up 4% – or £47 – of an average annual energy bill.

The Lib Dem energy secretary, Ed Davey, launched a pre-emptive strike against cuts to the ECO on Tuesday by writing to energy companies, most of whom oppose the ECO scheme, demanding greater transparency over how much the policy actually costs them to implement.

Companies including SSE and the British Gas owner Centrica have warned that the ECO could add £100 a year to bills due to the cost of finding eligible households. About half of the ECO funding is targeted at those receiving welfare benefits, including pensioners, disabled people and jobseekers.
A Lib Dem source said the party would try to block Conservative cuts to the ECO: "The scheme is about improving the energy efficiency of the homes of poorer people and pensioners. If anyone is saying let's rip up ECO and stop thousand and thousands of homes getting energy efficiency measures … it's not happening." Conservative sources declined to comment. The coalition partners are also in dispute over the subsidies given to renewable energy.
Lickorish, who worked in the energy industry for more than 40 years including a period at energy giant EDF, said: "It's devastating how much energy prices have outstripped incomes. Fuel poverty has increased and it is well known that this is a contributory factor to the UK's unenviable record of winter deaths. We fully expect those deaths to have risen when the new figures are announced in November."
Jenny Saunders, chief executive of National Energy Action and a signatory of the letter, said: "The main reason our energy bills are so high is because we have some of the most energy-inefficient housing stock in Europe. ECO is the one policy that is helping cut fuel bills now rather than address longer term security of supply and reducing carbon to tackle climate change. It is vital we use ECO funds to improve heating and insulation for our poorest citizens."
On Thursday, SSE stated: "This year's ECO costs per customer will be over 5% higher than those of the similar government-imposed schemes last year". The company said the "cost of delivering ECO is expected to continue to increase as the scheme goes on". In a letter to party leaders on 1 October, SSE's Phillips-Davies proposed shifting the current £110 of annual green and social policy costs from customer bills into general taxation, "shifting the cost away from those [in fuel poverty] who can't afford to pay and on to those who can."
Lickorish agreed: "The most progressive way to pay for these measures would be through general taxation."
The National Insulation Association (NIA) warned on Thursday that the government's energy efficiency measures were "currently not delivering as expected by government with cavity wall installations 65% down and solid wall insulation over 70% down". In contrast to energy companies' call for a delay on meeting ECO targets, the NIA urged acceleration of ECO delivery.
Graphic: Paul Scruton for the Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/11/osborne-plan-cut-energy-company-obligation

Plug-In Hybrids Reviewed

Rise of the Plug-In Hybrids

Sierra looks at electric vehicles that go the extra mile

By Reed McManus

The Sierra Club's Go Electric campaign Visit our Electric Vehicle Buyers' Guide to get information about EV incentives in your state and emissions comparisons of EVs, plug-in hybrids, and conventional gas-powered cars in your region. You'll also find information about September's National Plug In Day, organized by the Sierra Club, Plug In America, and the Electric Auto Association.

Hooray for American cars. I say that not as a knee-jerk red-white-and-blue jingoistic American consumer—in fact, only one of the five cars I've owned was made in the USA (an unbreakable 1969 Dodge Dart)—but because Detroit's own Chevrolet is setting the bar when it comes to plug-in hybrid vehicles. Chevy's Volt, now in its third year, remains the standard for cars that combine plug-in battery-electric power with a gas engine.
The idea that a car can run some miles on tailpipe-emission-free electric power (and be recharged at will) and then switch seamlessly to a gasoline engine to continue 400 or so miles hits home with environmentally conscious drivers who, like many Americans, were raised on the intoxicating idea that cars reflect the liberating effect of the open road. You can help reduce climate change-causing emissions, air pollution, and oil spills without forgoing long-distance trips.
I mulled over American know-how and marketing genius as I slipped along California's U.S. 101 in a "crystal red" four-door Volt with library-quiet power. My commute (which I normally do by bus) is 41 miles round-trip, almost exactly what the Volt's display suggested I could drive on battery power alone. The EPA says that the Volt can travel 38 miles on a fully charged battery, while Chevrolet suggests up to 50 miles. But the term "your mileage may vary" has never been truer than with electric vehicles. Outside temperature, how much air-conditioning and heat you use, the terrain, your driving style, and the age of the battery all affect how many miles that charge will last.

See chart at full size.
As it turns out, I made the trip to work and back on a single charge, but not without effort. Typically a lead-footed fast-lane driver, I kept the Volt's miles per hour just over the posted speed limit of 55 (electric cars are most efficient at under 50 mph), joining a conga line of hybrid Toyota Priuses in the freeway's slow lane. And I practiced braking more slowly and smoothly, which returns more regenerative power to the battery. The Volt has a nifty gauge—it looks like a carpenter's level on the vertical—that lets you know when you're accelerating or braking too hard. Keep its rotating ball centered and you maximize your environmental do-goodness (and minimize your gasoline costs). Slow and steady. Now I understand why Prius drivers drive the way they do. I got home, plugged in, and looked forward to another 41-mile all-electric challenge the next day.

See chart at full size.
The man behind the Volt is Bob Lutz, a top executive at General Motors from 2001 to 2010 who envied how Toyota had leapfrogged Detroit with its groundbreaking Prius hybrid, introduced to the United States in 2000. Watch Chris Paine's fine documentary Revenge of the Electric Car and you learn that Lutz, a.k.a. Mr. Horsepower, previously brought us the road-hogging Ford Explorer and Chrysler Viper. With the Volt, Lutz showed that he had seen the light. "This country has to get off oil," he told Newsweek in 2007. "The electrification of the automobile is inevitable."
Lutz is also a notorious global warming skeptic and was heading General Motors when, starting in 2003, it scooped up all its beloved leased EV1 electric cars and crushed them, as documented in Paine's earlier work, Who Killed the Electric Car? So while he may not be a green purist, Lutz knew how to sell cars to Americans, and he figured that too few of us were willing to abide the limited range of an entirely electric car like the Nissan Leaf, which goes about 75 miles per charge. Hence the Volt's backup gas engine and its combined electric and gas range of 380 miles.

"This country has to get off oil," GM's Bob Lutz told Newsweek in 2007. "The electrification of the automobile is inevitable."

Some 14 million cars and trucks were sold in America last year, but the electric car segment remains a sliver. In 2012, some 450,000 electrified cars were sold, and that number includes now-ubiquitous conventional hybrids like the original Prius, which uses its battery power and gas engine in concert (and cannot be recharged from an outlet). Plug-in car sales last year totaled about 50,000, with the Volt in the lead with 23,461 and the Leaf in second place with 9,819. While just a few all-electric cars have entered the market since Sierra last looked at plug-ins ("Plugged In," November/December 2012), the plug-in hybrid market is comparatively booming. In addition to the Volt, there's Ford's C-Max Energi crossover and its Fusion Energi sedan (each with an EPA-rated all-electric range of 21 miles); the Honda Accord Plug-in (13 miles); the Toyota Prius Plug-in (11 miles); and the sleek and pricey Fisker Karma (33 miles).
Supporters of pure-electric cars may wonder what all the fuss is about. Why get all eco-righteous over a car whose battery propels it for as little as 11 miles before surrendering to a gas engine, they say, when most all-electric vehicles travel 75 to 100 miles per charge? They have accepted their cars' relatively limited range, perhaps being blessed with short commutes to workplaces where employers offer charging stations or possessing enough patience to plan away-from-home recharging.

http://sierraclub.org/sierra/201307/electric-vehicle-buyers-guide.aspx